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Re: Another question about language naming

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Saturday, March 16, 2002, 17:16
Padraic Brown wrote:

>Am 15.03.02, Herman Miller yscrifef: > >> So I'm thinking that Gjarrda in English should just be called Jarda, and >> pronounced in the obvious manner as ['dZAr\d@] (instead of ['J\arda]).
It's
>> not clear what the name for Tirylhat should be, but ['tI48Kat] isn't an >> option in English! I might settle for Tirethlat, or not bother trying to >> represent the lateral fricative and just use the original name Tirelat. > >I would probably settle for the latter: Tirelat. No foreign >sounds; no unusual spellings. Same for Jarda.
Jarda-- OK. Personally I'd go with Tirelhat, if only to indicate that it has a non-Engl. (albeit unspecified or difficult) pronunciation).
>> The question is how far to go in Anglicizing conlang names. I used to be
in
>> the habit of spelling the long [i] sound as "ee" in English
representation
>> of words like "Zireen" and "Neesklaaz". > >It's workable. We used to spell Hindoo et al that way.
Operative words _used to_. And because Hindoo words used to be written as if they were English, nowadays when they are more accurately transcribed, we don't know whether those <<oo>>'s are supposed to be [u] or [o:] or whatever........
> >> After switching to "i" for a while, >> I compromised, and now typically use "ie" for this sound. On the other >> hand, a word like "Zirien" risks being mispronounced as a three-syllable >> "zi-ri-en". So does it make sense to go so far as "Zireen" to avoid the >> chance of misinterpretation? Or would conlangers, who tend to be more >> familiar with languages than the average English speaker, assume this is >> meant to be pronounced [zire:n]? > >I would assume /zIRiEn/ for the former and /zIRin/ for the >latter. The double letter spellings look oh so English. :)
Agree on Zirien; "Zireen" could be [zIri:n] or [zire:n] or even [zajri:n] depending on whim. It strikes me that the <ee> will be quite confusing to _this_ group, many/most of whom are familiar with the idea of phonemics, and have managed to make the disconnect between the writing and pronunciation of English or English-ified words.

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Muke Tever <alrivera@...>